Pop Goes the Easel
Pop Goes the Easel is the seventh short subject starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959. Synopsis The onset of the Great Depression has forced the Stooges to look for jobs. However, they are mistaken as thieves and soon find themselves on the run from the police. With a cop chasing them, they flee into an art school where they are mistaken for students. They take their first art lessons while hiding from the police, resulting in a climactic clay fight that takes no prisoners. The film ends when three art students break sculptures over the boys' heads, resulting in them being soundly beaten up. Notes *The title of the film Pop Goes the Easel is a pun on the nursery rhyme "Pop Goes the Weasel," which is used for the one and only time as the opening theme. *The film also ends with the tune, as with the ending of Punch Drunks. *The two girls playing hopscotch on the sidewalk are Moe Howard's daughter, Joan and Larry Fine's daughter, Phyllis. *This is the first of several Stooge shorts in which Moe holds out his hand to Curly and asks him to "pick out two" fingers. Curly does, and Moe pokes him in the eyes with them. This would be a recurring joke. *This short contains a very rare scene in which Moe delivers a slap in the face to several people at once. At the end of the clay fight scene, Moe stops everyone and asks "who started this?!" Larry yells "YOU did!", to which Moe angrily replies "oh YEAH?!" and, with right hand extended, spins in a counter-clockwise motion, slapping everyone around him. *This short is the first to contain a clay throwing fight, a precursor to the classic pie fights which would become a staple of the Stooge films. The first genuine food fight would appear the following year in Slippery Silks. *This is the first Stooge short in which Moe holds out his fist to Curly and says, "See that?" When Curly replies, "Yeah," he smacks the fist dismissively, in which it swings in a circle behind Moe's body, over his head, and bops Curly on the head with it. *This is the first short in which Curly dresses in drag. Curly would somehow wind up in drag in several later Stooge shorts, such as Uncivil Warriors, Movie Maniacs, Matri-Phony, Micro-Phonies and Uncivil War Birds. *A colorized version of this film was released in 2006. It was part of the DVD collection entitled "Stooges on the Run." *An important scene appears to have been deleted after the Stooges have painted the floor and are trapped against the wall. The detective suddenly tries to enter what looks to be a door painted on the wall. It is possible that the deleted scene had the Stooges paint a door to solve the problem of being trapped by the wet paint. References *Solomon, Jon. (2002) The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion, p. 61; Comedy III Productions, Inc., ISBN 0971186804 Category:Three Stooges films